Do your restaurant patrons offer critiques of your food? “Every day! If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone jokingly say, ‘Pack your knives and go!’ It’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I haven’t heard that one before.'”

You love to fish. Have you ever caught anything you couldn’t turn into a good meal? “I throw most of my fish back. It’s really for sport. If I know I’m making dinner for people that night, I may keep one, but I don’t cut them up and put them in the freezer.”

What’s your favorite meal from childhood? “I grew up Italian-American in New Jersey, and we made Sunday gravy—what most people would call marinara sauce—with meatballs and sausage. Every Sunday, we started eating around 4 o’clock. And in the summer, I would go crabbing with my grandfather. We boiled crabs and put them in marinara sauce to make crab gravy. There’s nothing like it.”